Feeding the Insatiable: real and imagined narratives of art, energy and consumption for a troubled planet

Proposal for a design site in Refshaleøen by Juan Ignacio and Soria Villalonga (©LAGI 2014)

This international summit takes place at the remarkable Dartington Hall in southwest England from 17.00 on November 9 to 16.40 on November 11, 2016. This extraordinary site sits within some of the UK’s most spectacular landscapes, with more protected areas than anywhere else in the UK.

The event features thinkers and makers from across the world, with an opening keynote event from Land Art Generator Initiative (Robert Ferry and Elizabeth Monoian) with ecoartist / producer Chris Fremantle from eco/art/scot/land. Other sessions focus on Ecologies, Shaping the World, Artist projects, Communicating, Energy Generation and Poetics.

See more detail as it emerges in the programme.

The Land Art Generator Initiative has become one of the world’s most followed sustainable design events and is inspiring people everywhere about the promise of a net-zero carbon future. LAGI is showing how innovation through interdisciplinary collaboration, culture, and the expanding role of technology in art can help to shape the

aesthetic impact of renewable energy on our constructed and natural environments. The goal of LAGI is to design and construct a series of large-scale site-specific public art installations that uniquely combine art with utility scale clean energy generation

Composer Lola Perrin will give an opening performance which is in part been devised by and participated in by participants in the summit (more details to follow). Described as ‘hauntingly compelling’ (The Guardian) her music has been heard in concert halls across the world. You can hear more on her soundcloud page.

Our other keynote speaker is Laura Watts: writer, poet and ethnographer of futures. Laura is  Associate Professor in Science and Technology Studies (STS) at IT University of Copenhagen. Her interest is in the effect of landscape on how the future is imagined and made in everyday practice. How might the future be made differently in different places? Over the last fifteen years, she has collaborated with industry and organisations in telecoms, public transport, and renewable energy, to re-imagine how the future gets made in high-tech industry, and how it might be made otherwise.

Feeding the Insatiable welcomes scientists, engineers, artists, philosophers, public policy-makers, influencers, and experts in public art from across the world. See our emerging map of participants.

Proposal for a site in Copenhagen by Théo Rantos, Hélène Vesin (© LAGI 2014)

Art can change the world.  Artists have played an important part in every major social change in our society and have an indispensable role today in helping us deal with complex existential challenges.  But issues-laden art can be bombastic, unsubtle and lacking in spirit, particularly when artists insist they have a message to send. Renewable energy can change the world, too. But we don’t have to accept that only industrial scale installations are the answer.

This gathering encourages through creative intervention and invention and new approaches to scientific enquiry all manner of energy generation including the quirky, the impossible, the micro and the personal. It encourages debate – practical, philosophical, metaphysical, and theoretical – about how creative minds and creative spirit can be brought to bear on these issues.

We explore ways in which creative makers and enquirers –– artists, scientists, philosophers, theorists and others –– can increasingly play a part in moving rather than cajoling, inspiring rather than scaring, succouring rather than scourging. The impassioned voice has an essential role to play in shifting the inert and entrenched thinking about how we live in the world, how we consume its resources and how we subvert and circumvent monolithic thinking. The danger lies not in those with abrasively negative views (as panic leads to stridency bordering on the absurd and numbers inevitably dwindle to irrelevancy under the growing weight of evidence), but those who have no views at all.  Flicking the

switch is so utterly fundamental to our daily lives that we gasp with horror and puzzlement if it produces no effect.

There is an accompanying residential short course for three days adjacent to the summit, from Saturday November 11 to Monday November 13.  Special pricing is available for both if registered together.

Feeding the Insatiable is produced by art.earth; principal partner is Regen SW and the Dartington Hall Trust.